The negative impact of chronic stress

Stress is not always bad, it was created as a way to protect us and
survive, we talked about stress some weeks ago so to keep it short and simple
when you are in a very stressful situation you may feel your muscles tense, and
your heartbeat increases faster. Stress releases cortisol in the body, some
people know cortisol as the stress hormone. When you are under stress your body
prioritize safety so it shots down the immune system to conserve energy, blood
pressure raises, insulin resistance increases, the digestive system stops
working, increase inflammation. When you are in a stressful situation your body
uses all the energy it has to keep you safe.

All this is good in short term but when this becomes chronic it leads to
severe health problems, physical and mental. The huge problem is that we live
under stress every single day. From everyday traffic, to our teachers and
classmates or boss and coworkers to doing stuff you don´t like your stress
levels are high so your body is not interested on keeping you healthy, it´s
interested on survival.

Chronic insulin resistance can lead to diabetes, problems with the
digestive system lead to gut issues that are the cause of other bigger problems
including your brain, increased and chronic inflammation increase the risk of
chronic diseases, high blood pressure leads to heart diseases. Some of these
responses can also have an impact on your brain and can lead to serious
problems like Parkinson and Alzheimer.

So many health experts are talking about stress and how a huge
percentage of doctor’s visits are caused by stress. Chronic stress is causing a
lot of health issues. We only need to think about how stress affects a lot of
systems, hormones and functions in our body so it´s not hard to realize that it
is the cause of health problems.

Since chronic stress has an impact on almost all the systems and
hormones on our body, we need to consider that this creates a negative cycle.
When you are highly stressed or worried it is harder for you to fall asleep and
you tend to wake up at night, this poor sleep also affects negatively all the
hormones and systems on your body leading to so many health problems and you
can see it right the next day, you feel tired, you lack energy, you skip
exercise, it is harder to eat healthy foods.

When this happens your body is out of balance, it´s out of sync so it´s
not working and functioning properly. This is why you need to focus on the 5
principles of fitness and it is why I´m sharing everything I know so that you
can develop healthy habits so that your body is in sync and in balance.

Avoiding chronic is stress is key but, it´s actually impossible for must
of us so what you can do is use tools that help you reduce is. Mindful
breathing and mindful meditation are great tools and we talked about them last
week. Living in the present, not believing every thought that comes to your
mind are also strategies you can develop to help you keep stress low. Most of
us work on a job doing something we hate, something we don´t like and this is
one of the causes of chronic stress so doing something you love every single
day lowers stress and improves your mood. It can be as simple as singing your
favorite song, or dancing, reading one chapter of your favorite book, playing
an instrument, practicing an sport, drawing, etc.

Also reducing the time you spend on social media and watching news will
lower stress throughout the day, there´s no need to watch news all day long or
to watch them in the morning, after and at night. With just one time and no
more than 5 minutes is all you need to be up to date. With social media you
don´t need to check it every 5 minutes, you are not losing anything so schedule
a time to check it and you don´t need more than 30 minutes.

It would mean so much to me if you share this post with your friends and
family and if you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, together we can help
millions live a better life.

Pam

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About us

We profoundly believe that it´s possible to live a better life while enjoying every single moment of it as much as possible, we believe that keeping things simple and effective is the way to go, we prefer to keep things old school and stick with the basics.